A
recent online discussion in a poetry forum led me to think about
poetic originality, a quality that cuts across all the categories we
typically use to box up our poets for public consumption.
The
online topic was the recent appointment of Juan Felipe Herrera as
poet laureate. Discussion focused on the merits of Herrera’s
poetry and on whether the “real purpose” of a poet laureate was
to be an ambassador for poetry,
rather
than to represent the best of American poetry. Many people felt that
Herrera was a good choice because he was an “outsider” and
because his readings showed that he had an ability to reach broad
audiences.
I
was not one of Herrera’s harshest critics, believing his poetry to
be no better or worse than that of hundreds of other well-regarded
poets regularly published in prestigious publications. However, I
thought that his derivative, fuzzy and unadventurous surrealism in
poems like “Blood on the Wheel” (available online at the Poetry
Foundation) made him not the best choice, and that there were
better poets with similar techniques and thematic concerns, such as
Martin Espada. (For a defense of Herrera and “Blood on the Wheel,”
see Stephen Burt’s commentary on the poem, also online at the
Poetry Foundation.)
One
poster commented that Herrera was “for damn sure” a better choice
than Ted Kooser, Kay Ryan, or Billy Collins, poets who were
“middle of the road and boring.” It was at that point that I
felt the strangeness and inadequacy of the categories into which we
normally sort our poets.
It
seems to me that of Herrera, Kooser, Ryan, and Collins, Ryan is the
only one who is significantly, deeply original. No one else sounds
anything like her, not even Marianne Moore, her nearest poetic
ancestor. That's why it's so remarkable that she became poet
laureate. She's one of the best living poets, but she doesn't fit
into any school, and unlike Collins or Herrera, she’s not a poetic
extravert with a strong public persona. Before Ryan became a cause
celebre
in her 50's, she was virtually unknown and would have been about as
likely a candidate for poet laureate as Emily Dickinson. I like many
of Kooser's poems very much, and I'm often amused by Collins, but
their poems work in familiar ways, as do Herrera's.
On the other hand, if being an ambassador for poetry makes you a good choice for poet
laureate, then Kooser and Collins were two of the best choices.
Collins worked to get poems into high schools and his Poetry
180 anthologies
are still selling; Kooser's "American Life in Poetry" blog
is ongoing and widely read. Herrera will probably be a good
ambassador too, with his appealing persona and ability to connect
with audiences in live readings.
Choosing
Herrera as laureate was seen as choosing an “outsider.” But out of the four
laureates I’m discussing, Herrera and Collins are in many ways the
"insiders" in the "mainstream." Herrera has
taught and held prominent positions in universities since 1990 or so. And if the "mainstream" of American poetry is not in universities, I can't imagine where it would be. Kooser, by contrast, is an outsider, who, like Wallace Stevens,
has spent most of his life as an insurance executive, at a distance
from the literary mainstream. Ryan spent most of her teaching career
in obscurity at a California junior college. It was clear from our
online discussion that many people didn't feel comfortable
criticizing the supposed “outsider” Herrera. On the other hand,
the contempt of many “mainstream” poets for Kooser and Collins is
bold and explicit.
My
point is simply that the categories we usually use to classify poets
are porous and inadequate to the complexities of actual writing. Who
is "middle of the road" is a matter of point-of-view.
Herrera, supposedly an outsider, is arguably no more or less
conventional in his poetic techniques than Collins or Kooser. A
truly original poet like Ryan may be under-appreciated because she
doesn’t fit into the ready-made categories we use to evaluate who
is in or out of the “mainstream.”
